Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Garlic Planting

Celery Ready for the Freezer

Yesterday I was going to take down the whole lettuce bed. It also contains some herbs and celery. I did get the celery down before I was distracted by the garlic.

I decided since it might be the last really nice day it would be a good day to plant my garlic. The weather was just lovely, in the mid 60Fs. I had put aside a paper bag of garlic specially picked for planting. The cloves on the bulbs were big and perfect. I've done this for years. But this time when I opened the bag, the garlic was moldy. Ack! I obviously hadn't dried it enough. I only dried it for just over two weeks in the bike shed this year and usually I do it for three. But the weather was so hot in there this time I thought they would be fine. The ones in the basement in a mesh bag had no mold issues. So I tossed my beautiful big heads and used my others. Too bad. I still have plenty of garlic to eat this year. But I'm sad my bulbs with big cloves are gone. The big cloves really give the garlic a jump start on growth.

Looking East

The beds are really starting to look bare as I slowly pull things out. Do you see the string running along the beds? Well my daughter's dog understands that he is not supposed to go into the beds and is usually pretty good. But if something is in the way (like a person), he ignores it and just walks across them to get where he wants to go. Or cuts the corner if he is in a hurry. So I put up the string to give him a boundary. I'm no longer letting him down the long paths. He wasn't happy about that. But my newly planted garlic will thank me.

Looking West

This view is even more bare, but it is deceptive since there is a full bed of Asian greens and some beans past the row cover. And under that row cover are my cabbages and kohlrabi.

7 comments:

  1. That is some vigorous Mold. To bother growing on Garlic. Hmm :)

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  2. Darned animals in the garden! Annie went to sleep on the onions again, so I finally moved them to a raised bed. I had to move the lettuce cage over to cover my spinach seedlings, as the squirrels were digging them up to bury walnuts. They even uprooted a recently planted raspberry cane! I've never seen so many squirrels in the past and I fear I'll have hundreds of walnut trees growing by spring.

    That's too bad about the garlic. I know smaller onion sets make larger onions, maybe you'll find the same happens with garlic cloves. You can always hope!

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  3. Last year I bought some garlic for planting, but when it arrived it was all mouldy and I had to ask for a replacement (which was duly provied FOC), which proves the point that even the biggest firms can have issues like the one you encountered.Let's hope that the "B-team" garlic does OK!

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  4. Too bad about the garlic. I wonder if there were more mold spores than usual on the cloves? I need to cut some celery and freeze it today, before it gets frozen in the ground.

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  5. Always enjoy seeing the "big picture" of your garden. You make such good use of the fall days.

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  6. You've reminded me that I must get my garlic (and broad beans) in. I haven't had great success in the past but bought a bulb of Purple Wight as well as onion sets at a recent RHS show. Will definitely be getting the string tin out for my planting, got to keep the (neighbours) cats off!

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  7. My garlic crops looks like being pathetic this year. Not only did I not plant enough but what I did plant has grown really poorly. I think it needs more sun than I can give it unfortunately. I was able to grow a full years supply up until a couple of years ago but over the last couple of years (since my neighbours trees grew that bit taller) have been a lot more challenging.

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